This invention relates to fuels for internal combustion engines and is particularly related to a fuel and a process for making the same by using turpentine (a non-petroleum derivative) as the base raw material and combining it with alcohol in the presence of a blending agent such as ketone to manufacture a fuel.
With the high cost and shortages of gasoline and other petroleum fuels, there has been a long felt need for a non-petroleum fuel for use in internal combustion engines. Various non-petroleum products have been tried, but with little commercial success. The combination of small amounts of turpentine to alcohol for use in oil lamps has been well known. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 31 and 54,060. Another patent that discloses a combination of alcohol and a resin is U.S. Pat. No. 1,469,148. These patents are primarily concerned with the use of the mixture in oil lamps and similar devices. It is not known whether or not they were successfully used in the lamps, however, they could not be used as a fuel for automotive purposes. Firstly, the mixture will tend to separate to some extent, particularly at low temperatures. This will produce a non-uniform mixture of different compositions. However, in order to use a fuel in an internal combustion engine, the composition must be uniform so that the proper fuel-air mixture can be metered by the carburetor, i.e., the carburetor can combine the proper amounts of air with the fuel for efficient combustion to take place. If the composition varied, the carburetor setting (which controls the amount of air mixed with the incoming fuel) would have to be constantly varied as the composition of the fuel varied. This is a difficult and practically impossible situation. Thus, these oil lamp fuels could not practically be used for an internal combustion engine. Also these patents describe mixtures where the amount of alcohol exceed the amount of turpentine. However, with Applicant's fuel, the highest energy levels have been achieved with fuels where the amount of turpentine exceeds the amount of alcohol -- sometimes by as much as 3 to 2.
Thus, a high energy, uniform composition fuel combining alcohol and turpentine is provided for internal combustion engines.